“Look, friend, I don’t want to stiff you with all this paper. Just tell me what flat she’s in. We know she’s here.”
For an instant, the super’s eyes seemed to roll as wildly as an epileptic’s in a seizure, looking for any half-open crack in the doors along the hallway.
“She’s in 207, second floor. Second door on the right.” “She up there now?”
The super shrugged. “They all the time in and out. Fifteen people up there sometimes.”
Angelo and Rand loitered just a second on the sidewalk outside. “Angelo,”
Rand urged, “we should call in help. This could be big, very big.”
“Yeah,” the detective mumbled. “Fifteen guys. You might want to think about that. Only two of us.” Angelo picked at the stubble on his chin. “But, generally, pickpockets aren’t armed. They don’t want to go in for armed robbery. On the other hand …” He shook his head. “Sneaking a bunch of cops into a neighborhood like this is going to be like trying to sneak the sun past a rooster. Come on.” He had made up his mind. “We’ll take them ourselves.”
As he started up the stairs, Angelo reached not for his gun but for his wallet. He took out a Chase Manhattan calendar printed on a supple but firm slip of plastic. He flicked the card at Rand. “I’ll open the door with this. You step in and freeze them.”
“Jesus Christ, Angelo,” the agent almost gasped. “We can’t do that. We haven’t got a warrant.”
“Don’t worry about it, kid,” Angelo said, drawing up to the second door on the right on the second floor. “It ain’t a perfect world.”
“Gorgeous!”
Michael Naylor pirouetted around the model frozen in artificial grace under the arc lights of his studio, then dropped to one knee at just the point where he knew he would catch the mauve lights reverberating off the satin of her Saint-Laurent evening gown. “Fantasticl” He clicked his Haselblad.
“Unbelievablel”
He continued through a dozen shots and a dozen adjectives, each word more extravagant than the one that had preceded it, then straightened up, sweating from the strain and the lights. “Thanks, darling,” he told the model, “that’ll be all for now.”
He saw Laila as he stepped out of the circle of the spots. She had slipped in so quietly he hadn’t even noticed her arrival.
“Lindal” he gasped. “I thought you had a-“
She stifled his words with a kiss. “I got out of my lunch,” she said. “Take me to lunch.”
“Police-don’t move!”
The angry words ricocheted around the flat with the force of a caroming pelote ball. Angelo and Jack Rand stood just inside the door the detective had opened with his plastic bank calendar. They were in the classic policeman’s half-crouch, each clasping his revolver before him with outstretched hands. The suddenness of their entry, the intimidating sight of their arms froze the room’s halfdozen occupants.
The place was, just as Angelo had expected it would be, wall-to-wall mattresses, a squalid, ill-lit room reeking of sweat and cheap cologne. A clothesline filled with dripping undershorts, bras, tee shirts and blue jeans bisected it like a limp set of signal flags dressing an aging vessel’s masthead. There was only one piece of furniture in the room, a dilapidated sofa, its springs popping through its torn upholstery. Sitting on one end of it, stirring a casserole set on a hot plate on the floor, was the girl with the big tits.
Angelo recognized her immediately. He stood up, put his pistol back into his holster, stepped over one Colombian sprawling terrified on a mattress and drew up beside her. He sniffed at the stew bubbling in the casserole.
“Smells good,” he remarked. “Too bad you’re not going to get to eat it. Get your coat, muchacha. You’re coming in.”
Angelo was about to articulate the first question he wanted to ask her when the answer came springing like a fury from a mattress along the wall and bounded toward him, shouting, “Why you take my mujer?”
“Freeze!”
It was Rand, still in the doorway, his weapon drawn. Torres, the man in the second photo, stopped instantly. He was a gaunt-faced youth with drawn, tubercular cheeks, a sallow complexion and a mass of uncombed black curls spilling over his forehead.
“Take that thing off,” Rand ordered, waving his combat Magnum at the geometric patterns of the red poncho enveloping the Colombian. Despite Angelo’s comments on the street, the agent was going to take no chances on an arm being bidden under its folds.
“Thanks, kid.” There was both gratitude and new respect in Angelo’s tone.
Torres pulled the poncho over his head. He was naked except for unmatching socks and filthy yellow-gray jockey shorts. Angelo stepped over to him, took the pickpocket’s photograph from his pocket, studied it, then looked up, smiling, at Torres.
“Well, now,” he said, “you, my friend, are just the guy we’re looking for.
You’re coming in, too.”
Torres began to babble a protest of his innocence in a blend of Spanish and English. Angelo cut him short. “The guy whose wallet you boosted down at the terminal Friday picked your picture out of a pile. You’re going in. But first you and I are going to have a little talk.”
One of the three men sprawled on the mattresses stirred at Angelo’s words.
He was a sour-looking older man. “Officer, he new in town. He no much score yet.” His hand was groping under his mattress for his roll of cash. “I help straighten out.” He looked at the detective with a leering smile.
“Fuck you!” Angelo growled. “This isn’t a shakedown.” He pointed to the man, the two others in the room and a second girl crouched in one corner.
“All of you get out of here. Right nowl Or I’ll call in Immigration to check your papers.”
The four South Americans vanished at the mention of Immigration with an alacrity that was astonishing. As the door closed on the last of them, Angelo returned his attention to Torres. “I want to know one thing from you. Where’d that card go? Who’d you make the dip for?”
From behind him, Angelo heard a quick burst of idiomatic Spanish. He understood only one phrase, derechos civiles-civil rights. He gave the girl with the big tits an annoyed stare. She was still perched over her bubbling casserole, her pretty face suffused with sullen hostility. This one, Angelo mused, has got to go. He looked at Rand, still standing in the doorway.
Goody-goody two shoes over there, too.
“Take her down to the car,” he ordered. “I’ll bring him down as soon as he gets his clothes on.”
Rand hesitated a moment. He’s going to work him over, he thought. He wanted to say something, but not in front of these two. Too much was at stake to let them glimpse at any difference between them. “Let’s go,” he said to the girl with the big tits.
Torres had picked up a pair of jeans and was starting to put them on when Rand and the girl left.
“Drop those things,” Angelo commanded. “You’re not going anywhere yet. I said I wanted to talk to you. Where’d the cards from the wallet you boosted last Friday go? Who buys your fresh cards?”
“Hey, what you mean?” Torres was trembling, but he tried to force an air of defiance into his voice.
“You heard me. You did that dip in the terminal Friday on consignment. You were told to set up a guy just like the guy you hit. I want to know where that fucking card went.”
Torres stepped warily back a couple of paces, almost tumbling over a mattress as he did, until he was only inches from the wall. On the hot plate, the girl’s stew was still bubbling noisily. Angelo followed him.